


Crossover Memories

by BlueLightningAndNexus



Series: Blue Lightning and Nexus' Multiverse [6]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Amnesia, Family Fluff, Fluff, M/M, Multiverse, Mystery, Recovered Memories, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:47:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24634072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueLightningAndNexus/pseuds/BlueLightningAndNexus
Summary: Anyone who knows me and my stories knows that I tend to write in a multiverse. All of my original stories are interconnected; if they aren't in the same world, they're in a parallel universe connected to that world. I recently came up with a story that would have had the main characters from all of my series meeting up, only to lose their memories of one-another; this is the planned followup, wherein one of those characters (Maxwell) begins to unravel the truth and uncovers those memories of his.
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Series: Blue Lightning and Nexus' Multiverse [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1798072





	1. Chapter 1

Moriah felt old. 

She ran two fingers, scarred from an explosion at The Outfit years earlier, through her graying hair. Moriah’s stony eyes fell onto Maka, her “daughter” ordering a drink next to some raven-haired girl wearing a black and blue coat—Moriah recalled her name to be Diana…something. Moriah wasn’t too good with last names. 

Diana and Maka’s lips were moving, but Moriah was too far away to hear anything. 

“Kids are an interesting bunch, aren’t they?”  
Moriah looked over and found herself making eye contact with a man she hadn’t seen until recently, whose name she didn’t know. With the blur of faces, names, expressions and clothing, she could barely  
keep anything straight. 

“They sure are,” Moriah replied nonetheless, a small smile on her face. 

“She yours?” the man asked, subtly and quickly pointing to Maka. 

“Yeah, she’s mine.”

“It’s nice to see Diana interacting with some other girls her own age.”

Moriah wasn’t quite sure what to make of this man. He seemed gruff and stoic yet kind and gentle all the same. She couldn’t be exact as they were both sitting, but he was definitely tall, probably a head taller than her. 

“Sorry, I don’t know if you remember me from earlier. I’m Dennas. Dennas Shadowsky.” He extended a hand, wrapped in a black leather glove, forward, and she shook it, her eyes meeting his almost unnaturally blue irises. 

“I’m Moriah Mutsuko. That girl with your daughter, Diana, is Maka Mutsuoko.” 

“Sweetheart?”

Moriah looked behind herself and made eye contact with Henry, his tie gone and the top button of his white shirt undone. “Hello, dear,” she immediately replied, a small smile on her face.  
He took a seat next to her, followed by a brown-haired woman with fair skin, who took the seat next to Dennas. Henry set down a tray of drinks in the center for all to reach. 

“Well, I was going to introduce you to Dennas, but it seems you two have already met. Moriah, this is Arice Shadowsky.”

With the same smile she gave to her husband, Moriah looked to Arice and shook her hand. “A pleasure to meet you,” she told the new woman. 

“The pleasure’s all mine,” Arice replied. She emitted a sort of warmness from her, a unique charm that made the air lighter and the colors brighter just by being around. She wore a black coat, like her husband and daughter, but it was a thin material, and she opened it, exposing a light blue shirt underneath. 

Arice took a quick glance at Henry, then at Maka at the adjacent table. “Captain, you didn’t tell me you had a daughter,” Arice told him. “She’s quite a beauty! And she looks quite a bit like you!"

Moriah and Henry gave each other a quick glance, Moriah silently giving her boyfriend permission to explain the story this time. “Lady Shadowsky, no need to be so formal, you don’t need to call me Captain.”

“Well, it sounds like you don’t need to call me Lady Shadowsky either,” she replied dryly as she brought a cup of black coffee to her lips, earning a chuckle from Henry and her husband. 

“Nonetheless, she’s my daughter yes, but she's not related to me,” Henry told her, taking a sip of his tea. 

Arice suddenly put down the cop. “Oh, dear me, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to assume!”

“Oh, it’s quite alright,” Henry assured her. “We get that a lot, same with Sky. I’ve been told they look quite a bit like me.”

“Sky…the name sounds familiar…” Dennas muttered, voice trailing off as he tried to attempt the inconceivable task of possibly keeping record of all the many faces he’s seen. 

“You might’ve recognized him as the tall man with platinum hair that was here earlier,” Henry told him quickly. 

“He’s not yours either?” Arice gently asked, sounding as inoffensive as possible. "Biologically speaking, I mean." Henry shook his head. “Both adopted.”

“I thought I heard someone call him “Hunter” earlier?” Arice inquired. 

“Henry knew him for years before he met me,” Moriah answered. “He was just a boy back then, liked being called “Sky,” so that’s what we still call him, but his legal name is Hunter Ictus.”

“We have two more of our own,” Dennas told the couple. “Mertyn and Zane.”

Moriah wanted to make a quip about how unfortunate of a name “Mertyn” was, but she decided against it. 

“I believe I saw one of them earlier. Tall boy, fair skin, black hair, blue eyes?”

“That’d be him,” Dennas answered with a smile. He looked quite a bit like both of his sons, just taller, of a larger build, and with more facial hair. 

“Actually, from what I heard, there are two boys of that description named Zane,” Henry answered. “How old was he? 

“I’m not sure. Still a young man.”

Dennas chuckled. “Apparently, you met the other Zane. My boy’s nearing 20 soon.” Henry gave a quick whistle at that. “They grow up so fast, don’t they?”

Now, all four of them felt old. 

Changing the subject, Moriah tapped Henry’s shoulder and pointed to her watch when he turned to face her. “It’s about time we head out, wouldn’t you say?” Henry nodded in affirmation and finished off his drinking, before rising from his seat and grabbing his coat. 

“Where do you two have to go?” Arice asked. 

“We’re going to go pick up another guest from the airport,” Moriah answered. “We shouldn’t be too long.”

__________________________________

It’s not everyday that someone arrives at your doorstep and convinces you to come to a family gathering of a family you’re not even a part of. 

Than again, this specific breed of weirdness seems to both attract and be attracted to Maxwell, much to his dismay. Which is why he found himself answering the door to Legacy Westfield, arguably one of the most intimidating men Max ever met, a 6’3” tank of a man who never took off his shades, even when he was indoors, and seemed to have weird…meshes of metal on his arms. Maxwell was admittedly distracted by such strange contraptions during the first half of their conversation, so he only got about half the information he should’ve. 

But here he was, traveling halfway across the world to some neighborhood in rural America to meet these people. People who had answers. Apparently. 

_If this ends with me getting kidnapped, I’m gonna look like a fucking idiot_ he thought. 

He had never been to an airport before. Samuel walked him through it the night before. After some rather uncomfortable minutes without his shoes, backpack or belt, Max was back in baggage claiming.  
He didn’t know how long he was going to be here. A month? A week? Three days? Anything seemed equally likely. He brought extra clothes just in case; he could never be too prepared. He was used to relatively cool weather in Philadelphia, even now in April, and from what he was told, this reunion was going to be somewhere in London. Based on online weather reports, he couldn’t think of a particularly good reason to vary from his usual fashion at all, even if he was flying to another country. 

Once he got his luggage, a small bag with a half-dozen outfits inside and nothing more, he looked out and saw a redheaded woman holding a small photograph, and next to her, a tall man with medium-length black hair and a gray jacket. 

Samantha Summer met his gaze, brushing a strand of crimson hair out of her eyes. She looked down at the photo, then up at the man, Acheron Granite. He nodded in affirmation, and she put the photo away. 

“Excuse me?”

The redhead approached him, and Maxwell stopped in his tracks. She seemed incredibly, almost supernaturally familiar for someone he had never met before. A crippling, overwhelming sense of déjà vu nearly knocked Max off his feet. 

“You’re Maxwell, right?” She asked. “Son of Drake?”

Her words were kind and gentle, but Max sensed a hint of anxiety, a fear he would say no. But he figured this was the quickest path to the answers he sought. 

“Yeah. Are you two my ride?”

Samantha looked relieved. If Acheron was too, he didn’t show it. 

“We are,” she said, extending a hand towards him. “My name is Samantha Summer. This is Acheron Granite. We were hoping to bring you back with us.”

“Unless you want to walk, of course,” Acheron said with a smile. Max appreciated the joke, but frankly he wasn’t in the mood to laugh. 

“Come on,” Samantha said, grabbing Max’s arm and pulling him away, “it’s time for you to meet everyone.”

________________________

Apparently, “everyone” started with a middle-aged couple in the driver and passenger seats of a minivan. 

Max quickly shook their hands at first sight. The woman wore all black, and she was rather quiet. The man she was with wasn’t too much of a talker, but he was a bit better. He made some small talk, asking how long the flight was; Max didn’t have too much time to respond before he was already in the car. 

Max noticed 3 things about this new person. First, he was quite large, a well-defined build somewhat visible behind his thin white shirt; he was in his 50s now, but he was likely quite the bruiser in his prime. Second, he had some gray morning stubble; it reminded Max of Lawrence Rose back at home. Third, his handshake was…oddly firm, as if trying to crush Max’s hand before remembering what this was about. 

_Based on the 5 people I’ve met so far,_ he thought, _I’m betting the odds of my getting kidnapped have shot up from 40% to a cool 70%._

“I almost forgot to mention,” the older man said, “I’m Henry. Henry Shade.”  
“I’m Moriah Mutsuko,” the woman next to him continued.  
“I’d recommend a flowchart,” Acheron told Max, “things are about to get really complicated.”  
The car ride was a series of waves of information; Samantha tended to do most of the talking, but Acheron and Henry joined in every now and then, sharing new information about who was going to be there and what families they had and hadn’t met.  
Max took Acheron’s advice and opened a new tab on his Notes app, writing down any new names he mentioned. Why did they all sound familiar?  
__________________________  
“Maxwell, tell us about your friends back home.”  
Moriah’s words brought Max back to reality after a solid 10 minutes of zoning out.  
“Sorry, were you asleep? Jetlag can be quite the pain.”  
“No, no, I’m fine, just thinking,” Max replied. “My best friend at home is Samuel Rose. I’ve been living with his family for quite a while.”  
Moriah didn’t say anything, which Max found curious. At the notion of living with someone else’s family, most adults would get curious. ‘Why? What happened to your parents? Don’t you have family?’ and other such questions would follow. But not this time. This time, Moriah just kept on looking at the road ahead, as if she anticipated such a response.  
How much do these people know about me? Why do they known anything about me?  
The paranoia shot up again. Maxwell tried to hide it, but he had trouble gauging if he was doing a good job or not. He looked over at Samantha in the seat next to him; she was passed out, leaning against the window, Acheron next to her. How did she know about my father?  
Are these people friends of Drake? Granted, based solely on Legacy, this seemed vaguely like the kind of group that Drake would hang out with, but it still didn’t make sense to Max. Why not mention Drake from the beginning?  
Before his thoughts could get the better of him, Max overheard Henry’s voice.  
“We’re here.”  
Peering out the window, Max saw a gargantuan house, the kind that you would see in movies about white people with too much money and too much time. He felt…almost intimidated at how much of this was unknown to him.  
Max was the first to get out. He never had a problem with traveling before, whether it was by airplane or automobile, but a part of him felt drawn to the home in front of him and the people inside who he had never met. He threw a stray glance behind him and saw Acheron gently shaking Samantha awake.  
Actually, before he even made it inside, he met two new residents. As he approached the front door, two teenage girls shot up at the sight of him. One was a tall girl, probably about 18 or 19, with her hair divided into two colors, black and platinum, wearing all blue; and the other was younger, only about 14 or 15 if Max had to guess, with her hair cut into a short bun and kept in place with an emerald headband.  
The younger one spoke first. “Hey! You’re finally here!”  
She ran over and embraced Max in a bear hug, barely coming up to the 16-year old’s neck.  
He pulled away first. “Do…do I know you?”  
“Nope!”  
“Don’t mind her,” the taller girl said, “she’s just a hugger.”  
She extended a hand, and Max shook it. “I’m Kat. She’s Jade. We heard someone else was coming, so we came out to wait. It’s good to meet you.”  
The two greetings were polar opposites: the first the kind of greeting one would expect from an old friend or relative, and the second the meeting of two strangers.  
“Hey, is Samantha out here?”  
The three looked up at the front door, now open and revealing another resident. He was tall, with messy, dirty blond hair sticking out in a half dozen directions, probably about 18 or 19. He was wearing gray sweatpants and a black tank top, barefoot on the wooden porch, as if he lived his whole life here. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t; Max couldn’t tell.  
“She fell asleep on the ride home. She’s waking up.”  
Ryan nodded in agreement, and started to walk past. He stopped mid-step and turned around at Max.  
“I…I’m sorry, what’s your name?”  
“Maxwell.”  
“We…we haven’t met before, have we?”  
Max shook his head no. Ryan sighed in relief. “Oh, thank god,” he said with a chuckle, “I felt really bad for not remembering your name.” He put a hand on Max’s shoulder and leaned in slightly, a bright smile on his face. “Good to have you join us. New people are always welcome.”  
He walked out to the van just as Moriah and Henry were walking to the house, and Maxwell heard some quick pleasantries exchanged.  
“You’ll like Ryan,” Jade told Max. “He wasn’t this nice when he first arrived, but he’s gotten better in the last few days. I like him a lot. We all do.”  
“I’m sorry, I was told this was some kind of family reunion,” Max asked. “Is he…not related to you two at all?”  
Kat shot Jade a glance, before answering on Jade’s behalf. “No, neither of us are related to him or each other.” She could visibly see the wheels turning in Max’s head. “We’re mainly friends of some other families.”  
“Families?” Max asked. “Plural?”  
“Yeah,” Jade said with a chuckle, “there’s mine, the Jessamyn’s. I just found out about them a few months ago, but they’re super nice. Than there’s the Fordharts, they have a big family. You’ll meet them later. Plus some others, like that old guy—“  
“Candor,” Kat interrupted, “and don’t call him old, it’s rude.”  
“—yeah, that guy and his grandkids, they’re all super sweet. Plus the Shadowskys, the Starsparrows, the Carsons…they’re all pretty great, even if I don’t know them very well.”  
A boy poked his out past the door frame and made eye contact. He couldn’t have been much older than Max; his hair was on the longer side, tied in a bun, much like Samuel’s hair back home, but blond instead of black, bleached by the sun.  
“Hey, guys, dinner’s gonna be ready in 5.” He looked over at Max. “Hey new guy.”  
Stepping outside, Max could really get a good look at this guy: he was of above-average height, probably about 5”10’, and he had glassy hazel eyes that were brought out by the violet button-down shirt he was wearing.  
“I’m Jonathan. Hex. Nice to meet ya.”  
And with that, he was gone. That was four people Max met in less than two minutes, and he was already getting overwhelmed.  
“I can see you’re getting confused,” Acheron explained as he walked past the trio of teenagers and back inside the spacious home, “and I just want to tell you, dinner’s going to be worse.”  
______________________________  
You know what? He was right.  
Before the meal even started, Max got out his phone and started jotting down the names of everyone he could find. Apparently there were two Zane’s, two Diana’s, and some Japanese names he had never heard before, like Rekishi and Yari. All in addition to some downright unusual names, like Nova, Jet, Card and…Run?  
He could barely follow it all. Everyone seemed to know each other and know nobody at once; they had complete knowledge of specific social groups and not others, an awareness of the other residents separated by several degrees. Candor knew Xavier who knew Owen (apparently they were related) who knew Noah who knew Michael, for example. Lord knows how or why they all know each other.  
Many of the teenagers all seemed to move around the house in shifts. Maxwell found himself ushered into the spacious cooking area. Many of the adults were all talking and cooking in here, all together as a singular unit. One of them was a tall man with thin black hair, Ryder Misaki, with one red eye and one blue eye.  
“Hi! It’s always good to meet a new friend. Did Henry drive you here?”  
Maxwell took a second to respond, partially because he was so entranced by the heterochromia, partially because he needed a moment to remember who Henry was, and partially because he was still confused about why he was here.  
"…uh, yeah, he did.”  
Ryder chuckled a bit. He seemed like a great guy, but Maxwell found his confusion overriding any appreciation for this stranger’s kindness.  
“I know, I know, it’s kind of hard to look away from,” he said, pointing a finger up to his red eye. “I’ll admit myself, it’s pretty cool.”  
“Well, yes, that’s part of it, but—“  
Before Maxwell could say anything else, such as asking why the hell he was even here, a woman came over, wrapping her arm around Ryder’s, and Maxwell noticed a wedding ring with small red and blue jewels, perfectly matching the large purple jewel on Ryder’s own hand.  
“Sweetheart, could you fetch one of the kids? I could use a hand with the stew.”  
She looked down at Maxwell. “Hey…could I have some help?”  
The woman introduced herself as Layla. She was Ryder’s wife. When he had a free moment, he wrote that down in his phone.  
The two worked in relative silence for a moment. Layla gestured towards a small cluster of cooking tools and quickly informed Maxwell she was still working on dessert. It seemed simple; she just needed someone to help decorate a cake for her. He got to work on layering the top of the cake with thick, cold icing.  
She seemed nice enough, possessing a wide smile as she asked, and her words made it clear that she wasn’t ordering anyone, just asking. Maxwell would’ve usually brushed her off, but he felt he needed to do something to earn his spot here in…well, whatever you could call this cluster of families.  
“You’re…not related to my husband, are you?”  
It was an odd question that pulled Max out of his train of thought. He stopped for a second, and looked at the ground, almost scared to make eye contact at the question.  
“Well…I don’t think so. I assume I’m related to someone here. Based on what that one girl told me, there are a lot of families.”  
He was referring to Jade, but in the moment, he didn’t clarify who she was (nor did he even remember), and he realized afterwards that Layla probably wouldn’t figure it out either. She didn’t seem to mind the vagueness.  
“Don’t be sure. A lot of us are just friends of friends.”  
“Are you?”  
She chuckled a bit. “Well, I am friends with Ryder, but I’m also his wife,” she joked.  
“Well, yes, I know…but is he related to anyone?”  
She paused for a second. “We should really get you a flowchart.”  
“We probably should,” he conceded.  
“Ryder’s a member of the Jessamyn family. Have you heard that name?”  
That girl, Jade, mentioned it earlier. She was a part of that family…apparently. Ryder told her as such.  
“Ryder’s mom is a part of that family too, but she obviously didn’t keep her maiden name when she got married.”  
That made sense. But it still failed to explain why Maxwell was here.  
“I know you’re taking a major leap of faith here,” she said, putting a hand on Maxwell’s shoulder in a comforting, almost motherly gesture, “but please, just be patient. Everything’s going to make sense eventually.”  
Maxwell wanted to believe this kind, gentle woman, but he really didn’t have it in him to do so. Not today.  
_________________________  
It would be two hours before Maxwell saw another familiar face.  
Well, familiar is a rather relative term, but at least it wasn’t a new face. Once dinner was ready, Layla instructed him to go eat while she finished the cake, calling in someone else to help her, a thin woman with long blue-and-white hair.  
Once he took a seat next to a few other teenagers he didn’t recognize on his left, he found Samantha taking a seat on his right.  
“Hey! You doing alright?”  
Max wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that question. He also wasn’t quite sure why that question was asked in the first place. Did he seem alright? Did he look alright? He hadn’t seen a mirror since yesterday; maybe he just looked like shit.  
Being a man of few words, Max decided the best course of action was to just nod in agreement. Samantha seemed satisfied by this. She started looking around, as if for someone, and quickly stood up, pulling off her sweatshirt as she did so.  
“Save my seat, I don’t see Ryan and I’m gonna go find him. Thanks!”  
She threw it on the seat of her chair and started walking into another room. Out of the corner of his eye, Max noticed a piece of leather on the seat underneath the sweatshirt. Pulling it out, he realized it was a small wallet with her name stitched into the side: Samantha S. Summer.  
Shit, he figured, I should probably get this to her.  
Once he stood up to walk after her, a piece of paper fell out of the wallet. Thinking nothing of it at first, Maxwell leaned down and picked it off the ground…  
…why was he in this?  
He hoped nobody realized how quickly his eyes widened in shock, how quickly he dropped the wallet back onto the seat and forgot about it, and how quickly he exited the room in an entirely different direction without any intent to follow Samantha. 

The entire family (or families, rather) was clustered in the dining rooms. It wasn’t hard to find a guest room without any inhabitants, close and lock the door, and lean against the wall, examining the piece of paper in front of him. 

“What. The. Hell.” 

It was clearly a photograph, a group of people all standing close together, bloodied and bruised and happy and laughing, like they just got out of a fight for their lives and loved every second of it.  
The puzzling part was the fact that Maxwell was in the group. 

He looked over the faces, recognizing a couple from throughout the day. The teenager with the blond hair, Jonathan Hex; the heterochromic resident, Ryder Misaki; between them, Samantha, her hair longer and her face younger; and sitting on the floor in front of Samantha was Kat, with some noticeable cuts on her face and neck in spite of her beaming smile. 

Putting the photo in his left hand, Max opened up his phone and started consulting the notes he made throughout the day with his right, trying to use the list of names and relationships to decrypt the people in the picture. 

Next to Kat and Samantha were some people whose faces he recalled but whose names he wasn’t nearly as sure about. A boy no older than 12 with a solid blue t-shirt and brown jeans...Maxwell vaguely remember him introducing himself as Tom Herbertson. Sitting arm-in-arm with Tom was a man with long, dirtied platinum hair and a thin face; consulting his list, Max was confident this was Sky, who Henry mentioned as being his son on the car ride here. With both of them was the blue-haired woman, Aquarius, that was helping Layla finish dessert; as well as a balding man in his late 40s-early 50s wearing some kind of military uniform. 

And in the midst of it all…Max. 

“Who are these people?” he thought aloud, tears threatening to well down his eyes. “How do they know me? Why do they know me? When was this taken?!”

Holding the photo closer, he consulted the watermark, which gave a small, faded date. Some of the numbers were a bit too small to read, but he could distinctly make out a month: November. 

It was April right now. 

“What the fuck?"


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two more people try to explain to Maxwell everything that is going on. It works...somewhat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing this story has been seriously cathartic. Again, all of my stories are set in a massive multiverse, with each universe being one of a variety of genres (space opera, fantasy, superhero, cyberpunk, etc.) so it felt oddly calming to write a small story with everyone together in a very domestic setting. I'm essentially writing fanfiction of my own characters, but I'm the only one who knows who they are and what the hell is going on.

“Have…have you ever heard of the multiverse theory?”

The old man was more than a tad bit eccentric. That much was evident by his room. Maxwell never thought of himself as a particularly observant person (those sort of characteristics were much more common in Samuel), but it didn’t take a genius to realize how all-over-the-place and intelligent this guy was. Actually, he probably had a genius level IQ based on the stuff scribbled everywhere.  
The room was small. Well, it was actually pretty decently sized, but it sure felt small. It was crowded with books piled high in the corners, gadgets half-finished laying on the bed, and a whiteboard with equations Maxwell couldn’t hope to understand in this lifetime or the next. 

“The what?”

He was so entranced in looking around this place, he barely even registered this guy’s words, let alone his own response. 

“Shit,” the guy said, putting his face in his hands, “shit, this is gonna be a bit tricky to explain.”

“Hey, old-timer, I don’t even know you. This is pretty great and all but I think I’m gonna be going…”

“My name’s Xavier,” the man said, words a bit muffled behind his hands. 

“What?”

“Xavier Williams. That’s my name.”

Jolting up from his seat (and startling Maxwell in the process), he grabbed a marker off the edge of the desk and the corner of the whiteboard, flipping it over to the other side, a surface covered in equations scratched onto pieces of notebook paper taped to the wall. 

Without even thinking, Xavier stuck the marker in his mouth and pulled it out, the cap remaining between his teeth as he practically threw all the papers off. 

“You came here for answers, right? You wanted to know why you were invited to this? Than stay, and we’ll give you answers.”

Maxwell growled a bit, standing up, fists slightly clenched. “You’re waiting to do that now?! How do I know you’re not going—I don’t know—kidnap me or something.”

“There were over 30 people upstairs,” Xavier said. “If we wanted to do anything besides serve you dinner, it’d be done. You want answers? Cause this,“ he said as he gestured to the whiteboard, “is how they start.”

Maxwell sat back down, still on-edge but satisfied with this guy’s explanation. 

“Also,” Xavier said as he started drawing, “I’m not that old. I’m 49.”

“Really? You’re going gray.”

“I know, my own son tells me that most days. Now hush, I’m trying to help.”

“Help with what?”

“This!” Xavier said, side-stepping to reveal a series of bubbles and dots, all connected by a series of lines on the whiteboard. 

“The hell is that?”

“Our multiverse. Well, a drawing of one. It’s a theory that was proposed a few decades ago. It states that your universe is one of many.”

“And…it’s true?”

“Irrefutably so, yes. You’re from one of many different universes, and so am I?”

“What fuck are you taking about? I’m talking to you right now, aren’t I? How are you in a different universe?”

“Just listen. I’m not in a different universe right this second, I’m from a different one.”

A small knock on the door briefly pulled Maxwell out of the conversation. “Come in,” Xavier said with a defeated sigh. 

A tall, skinny teenager walked in. His hair was spiky and messy, like the old guy across from Maxwell, but jet black and a tad shorter instead of the thin, white, long strands on Xavier’s head. 

“Hello Father,” the kid said. He made eye contact with Maxwell for a brief moment. Max thought he saw something flicker in this kid’s eyes. Confusion? Possibly. Recognition? Maybe, but Max has never met him. Then again, it turns out he’s taken group photos with half of these people and he doesn’t remember them. Apparently. 

“Are you doing the explanation?”

“Yes.”

“Want me to do it?”

“God, yes,” Xavier replied. “You do a better job of explaining this than I can.”

Maxwell watched this kid pluck the marker out of his father’s hand and take over where his predecessor left off, all as Xavier left through the open door. 

“I’m sorry, what’s your name?” Max asked. 

“Rafe,” came the reply. “This is you,” he said, pointing the marker to one of the bubbles. “This is your dimension. It’s pretty interesting, but nothing I haven’t seen before.”

“Well, aren’t you special?”

“Hush,” Rafe replied instantly. “You’re worse than my cousin.” Pointing to an adjacent universe of a slightly smaller shape, he continued. “This is my universe. We aren’t really supposed to meet, but we did.”

“When?”

“I’m getting to that,” Rafe explained. “The theory is that several billion years ago, not just one Big Bang happened, but multiple. Each created a new universe, each with some of their own people and places and things.”

The kid’s voice was totally monotonous and emotionless, as if he had done this a million times. No frustration or eccentricity, unlike Xavier. 

“Now, this is where things start to get weird. You asked ‘When’, but the thing is, you can’t really measure time with this.” 

“You’re not improving your case here,” Maxwell said with a bit of a smile. 

“You and Stella would get along great,” Rafe replied. “She’s the cousin I mentioned. You might’ve met her upstairs.”

“I didn’t.”

“Well, you might’ve met her earlier.”

“What?”

“I’ll get to that,” Rafe responded, “I’ll explain that. Have you heard of the Gordian Knot?”

“Nope.”

Rafe blinked for a second. “Oh. Well, it was a legend. A man named Midas, son of King Gordias of Telmissus, made an incredibly complex knot, and anyone who untied it would be ruler of Asia. Alexander the Great came along, tried to untie it, and decided to simply chop the knot apart. He went on to conquer Asia.”

“What does that have to do with us?”

Rafe paused for a second. “Oh, well, I suppose it doesn’t directly relate to us, I got kind of off-track there. But our multiverse is somewhat like the knot itself. So incredibly complex and interconnected, that even though it consists of many moving parts, it cannot be separated or unraveled.”

He looked back at the whiteboard, many circles all leading into the center, and he pointed to it. “Well, it was undone, in a sense. But I guess instead of it being a massive rope tied into a knot that was ultimately cut, it’s more like a series of interconnected iron chains that were melted down into a single shape.” 

“That analogy makes no sense.”

“Ok, you’re right,” Rafe replied. He paused for a second, looking out the door, than back at Maxwell. 

“Alright, analogies are useless here and I’m going to be direct about this, so don’t interrupt me:  
Once, there were about 12 different universes. Technically, there were—and probably still are—some sub-universes, and likely many others that we haven’t discovered, but they aren’t relevant, so let’s keep it at 12. Each of these universes had their own people, and their own heroes, but also their own villains.  
We were some of the heroes. Some of the villains tried to move between the universes. There was a massive chain reaction, and by the end of it all, we all started to know each other.”

“What happened?”

“I said don’t interrupt me.” Rafe paused for a second, like a computer monitor freezing, and looked down at the papers and folders all around the floor. “Wait, do you mean what happened to all of us? As in, why don’t we know each other anymore?”

Maxwell didn’t really know what can of worms he opened, and he had no idea what the “correct” response was in this situation, but he simply nodded in affirmation; that was the intention of his question.  
Rafe paused, then crouched down and grabbed a pile of folders to the side of the whiteboard legs. He started rapidly flipping through their contents.  
D-did he hear me? Maxwell thought. Is he just intentionally ignoring me?

“Found it.”

Rafe stopped digging and held onto the corners of a pencil drawing. Peering over, Max started to get a clear look at the details on the paper. 

It was a picture of a man, large by any standard of the term, with these…strange layers of armor on his body. He barely even looked human; the art was detailed as can be, but it lacked characteristics such as irises in the eyes. 

“Wh-who is that?” Maxwell asked. ‘What is that?’ would be a more accurate question. 

“The Beyonder,” Rafe replied. “At least, so I’ve been told. You remember that kid our age upstairs? Jonathan Hex?”

Maxwell thought for a moment, somewhat entranced by the picture, and then nodded. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the picture he swiped from Samantha’s wallet. He didn’t know why, but he was almost hoping this was different. He was hoping that the next time he would unfold it, he would be gone, or he would look closer at the photo and realize that the boy in there had longer hair, or a different face, or different eyes. He could explain to everyone in this house that he wasn’t the long-lost friend they wanted to find, and they would all realize this was a big misunderstanding.

But that didn’t happen. With his signature toothy, cocky smile, Max was still in the middle, arm-in-arm with strangers that must’ve been his friends. 

Looking at the photo, Max’s eyes found Jonathan. He looked different in the photo; he was a bit shorter, a bit skinner, and his hair was cut shorter and much brighter, bleached by the sun. But it was him, without a doubt. 

“What about him?”

“He was one of the people that fought the Beyonder,” Rafe explained, pointing to the drawing. “This guy, right here.”

Rafe looked down at the drawing, one he had examined millions of times. The pencil was smudged on some corners and a bit faded on others, but the important stuff was there; the inhuman, almost supernatural face remained untouched by time and wear. 

“He was one of the villains I mentioned. He tried moving through universes, but he was sloppy about it. And…it ruined everything.”

“What?”

“Well, it didn’t ruin everything, but nothing was the same. Everything was restarted, like rebooting a computer. Suddenly, all the universes were together, dozens of groups of people from all of them were in the same world.”

He pointed to the drawing in his hands. 

“This was a drawing by Chase, an artist’s recreation. He was someone from Jonathan’s world, but Jonathan can’t even remember how he got it.”

Rafe pointed over to the picture in Maxwell’s hands. 

“I have another cousin, Owen. His friend Jadiss is behind the camera on that photo, apparently. I don’t remember how any of this happened.”

“If you don’t remember how any of this happened, how do you know it’s true?”

Rafe thought about that for a second, looking at the photo and the people in it. “Others besides me remember the universes before. Some of them went to go pick you up from the airport.”

“Like Samantha?”

“Exactly,” Rafe answered. “Jadiss was another one. So was Jonathan. They’ve all been looking for each other for the last several months, trying to figure out who’s who and trying to help everyone else remember.”

Maxwell tried to take in all of this information. “Let’s say I believe you. Wholeheartedly, in fact. Let’s say I become all buddy-buddy with those people upstairs. What’s next?”

“Whatever you want,” Rafe replied. “We’ve been sticking together. You may stay, or you may go whenever you want and forget this ever happened, or you can do anything in-between. We’re not going to force you.” 

Maxwell put a hand on his chin. Logically, he should know that the best possible course of action would be to grab his shit and run out the upstairs door as fast as he could and not stop until he has on a one-way flight back home. But...he didn't do that when he first entered the house. He didn't refuse this invitation in the first place. It all felt **right** , and he couldn't deny that there was a part of his brain that felt that everything Rafe was saying made perfect sense. 

"I want to hear more about this," Maxwell told him. "Tell me more about the universes before. What were they like? What was I like? What were **you** like?"

Rafe smiled. "I'm so glad you asked."


End file.
